


Reflected in the Window

by lotosBolter



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dying Will Zombies, Gen, Inspired by The Walking Dead, Trauma, Unconventional Uses for Dying Will Flames, Yamamoto Takeshi is a Baby Psycho, but what else is new, don't read this if you are a generally fragile person, or if you don't like your suffering steak with a side salad of grief, taking the despair setting and turning it up to eleven, when the walking dead and dying light meet in an anime and have a terrible baby together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-17 10:03:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21265460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotosBolter/pseuds/lotosBolter
Summary: When his world dies to be reborn in a twisted, fading light, Tsuna discovers his Dying Will.
Relationships: Tsunayoshi Sawada & Mochida Kensuke
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	Reflected in the Window

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this years ago and had always planned to post it on Halloween, but I kept missing the window. Now I finally get a chance to show off my desperation baby in the proper season! SO PROUD
> 
> Take a note of the tags, ready the tissues, and lets sail into this Despair Event Horizon together~

For Tsuna, the end of everything only really began around noon.

He was told later that there had been news reports the night before and that morning; the escalating panic had been recorded on every media outlet. Real hysteria broke out when the first people turned in Japan were found. But Tsuna had stayed up late playing his RPGs. And that morning, panicking at the time and still woozy from bed, he had even skipped grabbing some toast and had instead catapulted out the front door, yelling a negligent “I’m leaving!” to his mom as he did.

That would become one of his deepest regrets, later.

Maybe due to his sleep dep, but probably just thanks to the way Tsuna generally went about things, he managed to remain oblivious to the talk of his classmates until around noon.

That’s when someone jumped off the roof.

~

Tsuna stares at the body through the window and shivers.

He’s not sure if he actually was paying attention and heard the thump and splatter a minute ago, or if now he’s just imagining he heard it. The screaming and crying he can hear just fine. And it seems to be getting louder, now that he’s noticing it.

Another of his classmates bursts into tears, sobbing and clutching at his desk. Tsuna looks at him, and realizes then that something is wrong. Other than the obvious. Catastrophically wrong.

Looking around, and seeing the tense and frightened looks on all of his classmates, Tsuna also realizes that he’s the only one who doesn’t know what it is.

Tsuna jumps as there’s another splatter-thump, and turns in time to see the third body flash past the window on the way down.

When he hears that one hit the pavement, he knocks over a desk jumping back.

There’s sprays of blood on the swept concrete below, and Tsuna starts to hyper-ventilate, staring, unable to look away. He’s never seen a dead body before. Now he’s seeing three.

_What’s going on? _

_What’s happening?!_

The intercom crackles before blaring: _“All students, faculty, and staff must remain calm. Stay inside your classrooms. Any students outside their rooms must find them immediately. Anyone who leaves school premises or opens a window will be bitten to death.”_ The intercom crackles off. _Was that Hibari?!_

Somehow, hearing the voice of the terrifying head of the Disciplinary Committee over the sound system is enough to unstick Tsuna’s shoes from the floor, and he spins away from the window.

His classmates are staring at the speakers too, and they seem to rally from the announcement. ‘That’s right,’ Tsuna hears a couple of them whisper, huddling now in groups that Tsuna is excluded from. ‘Hibari will save us. Hibari will help us.’

_That terrifying guy can be a really good leader when he wants to be…and when he’s not biting people to death for crowding…_ Tsuna thinks, uneasily shuffling closer to his clustered classmates. He wants to insert himself into one of the groups (_for safety,_ his hindbrain urges). He still doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows he doesn’t feel safe on his own. His classmates are already grouped together though, and Tsuna gets the feeling that he has been left out.

A girl shrieks by the window.

Tsuna whirls around again, looking out the window, terrified of another suicide.

He can’t figure out what he’s seeing. At first, he thinks paramedics have arrived to help.

_Why won’t that girl quit screaming?_ She’s shrieking in a warbling, ear-piercing way, completely hysterical. _Someone’s gone to help those poor people down there, though there’s a lot of…blood…_

More blood splashes onto the pavement.

The paramedics are covered in it. Then one of the ones with their back to him shifts, and he can see someone grabbing down with hands into a red maw, glistening red-black, and pulling strings and blood and shiny, gleaming things up with their bare, dirty hands. There’s something wrong with their eyes, and then they’re _eating it,_ eating _the blood, the tissue, the shiny, rubbery-looking things_-

Tsuna stares, and stares, and stares, and doesn’t understand a thing.

Then he’s doubling over, throwing up spit and orange stomach acid, but doesn’t understand a thing.

What did he see?

He doesn’t know.

He can’t have seen it.

Impossible.

_You get it_, something, in his head, whispers.

_You know._ He’s in shock, down on his knees. His head is below the window, but he can see it still, still see it happening outside, the black teeth, the red wiped all over their face, the shiny, glistening strings…

_It_, something whispers. **_Its_**_ face._ Tsuna whimpers.

_(That is not a person.)_

_They are! _Tsuna protests, to what he has no idea. _They’re people! But they’re…_

_(bloodshot redring **yellow**unevenpupils slackjawedhungry)_

_They’re…_

Tsuna lurches, staggering to one of his classmates, clutching his uniform jacket with both hands. “W-what _is this?_ Who are those people outside?! _What’s going on?!_”

They slap his hands away. Tsuna looks up into his classmate’s face and they look back at him, hostile, terrified, and disgusted.

“How _fucking stupid_ are you, Dame-Tsuna? Didn’t you see the news!?” Apparently deciding that telling him is a waste of time, his classmate turns away to return to his group, the other students giving him hard looks. Tsuna stares back at everyone, disbelieving.

“Ah, Dame-Tsuna.” Tsuna turns, and blinks a little to see his classmate Yamamoto rubbing his head.

He’s facing Tsuna, but he’s also watching the windows out of the corner of his eyes. Tsuna turns his face so he can’t see them. He’s seen too much already.

“They’re _infected _people.” A groan comes from outside, and then a whole chorus of groans, like a horrifying bird call. “I…guess?”

(_Not people._) “Infected? Like a disease?” A disease can make you do…that? Tsuna sincerely regrets now not always washing his hands after using the bathroom.

(_Non-people._)

“Yeah. Somehow.” Yamamoto turns completely now to look out the windows, and Tsuna’s not sure, but underneath all his horror, Yamamoto almost looks…fascinated? “They think it got started in Europe? According to the news last night anyway. It got really crazy this morning. They said they found some case in Tokyo, but then they said that it was under control, and that everyone should go to work and school today like normal. But I guess, that wasn’t true.”

_You think?_

Screaming starts up outside.

Despite themselves, everyone rushes to the windows to see. Class 2-C is outside, running in all directions. The…_infected_ (_not-_)people leave the suicides (_torn to pieces_, bile rushing up Tsuna’s throat again) on the ground to chase them.

One of them takes down a student right below their classroom window. They go right for the girl’s neck.

_That shouldn’t be possible. How can…with just his teeth and his **fingers**…? _It shouldn’t be possible to take apart someone that way. People shouldn’t be that fragile.

Tsuna faces the classroom and curls up under the window, clutching his knees with all his terrified strength, sobbing, and almost not noticing.

His eyes are wide open, but for some terrible reason, he can’t see anything else than what is happening outside. The others(_bodies_) drawn to the gargling girl on the ground, like flies to rotten fruit.

Everyone else moves away from the windows again, and aren’t in any better shape than he is. The girls are shaking, clinging to each other. The boys stand so close together they’re literally rubbing shoulders. Only him, and oddly enough, Yamamoto, are standing (or in his case, sitting) by themselves.

Their teacher, who has been clutching to her podium, horrified, comes back to her senses suddenly.

“That’s what happens when you don’t maintain discipline!” Their teacher snaps, angrily pushing up her glasses. “Hibari-sama told everyone to stay inside!” She thrusts out one hand, pointing out the windows. “They deserved that for not following directions!”

The students look at her in shocked silence. _Everyone knows Saionji-sensei is harsh, but I never thought she would be this bad!!_ Tsuna found himself thinking. Their teacher glares out the window and then marches to the classroom door, sliding it open.

“Ah, sensei! Didn’t Hibari-san tell everyone to stay in their classrooms? You shouldn’t go out there!” One of his classmates protests. Saionji turns her head to give all of them a condescending smile.

“Hibari-sama said _students_ need to stay in their classrooms, not teachers. Obviously, he would want us in his office to strategize. You stay here, while we teachers handle this-”

A hand (_blue, nails look yellow_) grabs Saionji by her sweater.

Her speech turns into a shriek as she’s pulled out of the doorway.

A red spray flies in the doorway and her shriek turns into an agonizing scream that rings in Tsuna’s head for the rest of his life.

The students scream and run away from the door, as Saionji falls to the floor outside, only her head visible in the doorway. She’s facing them, blood covering her neck, glasses crooked, eyes empty.

There’s chewing noises.

Tsuna stumbles back with the rest of his classmates, and watches as a head, gore-splattered, strips of skin hanging out of its cheek exposing its teeth, blood-matted hair, eyes- (_yellowraggedpupils_) crazy eyes, leans over and bites his teacher’s cheek.

Tears off flesh so easily, chews, swallows.

Again.

The door slams shut on Saionji’s diminishing face. It startles Tsuna, and he looks to see that it’s Yamamoto, grim-faced, pushing the latch in to lock the classroom door. It snicks, but against that nightmare it seems incredibly feeble.

That thought feels completely justified when that hoarse cry, gut-deep but voiced through broken tracheas, echoes in the hall and the door rattles.

Some of the girls shriek, unable to help themselves in their absolute fear, and Yamamoto moves away from the door uneasily. The door continues to bang against its frame.

Yamamoto glances towards the other classroom door, Tsuna following his gaze, and he knows what he’s going to suggest before Yamamoto turns around again.

“We’re going to have to make a run for it.”

Several loud protests sound from the boys and one from a girl, Kurokawa Hana. Tsuna knows her by proxy as Kyoko’s best friend.

It’s strange, but he thought of her right then.

_I’m so glad Kyoko didn’t come to school today,_ Tsuna thinks. _At least she won’t get eaten with the rest of us. Why are they being so loud?? Can’t they tell that’s a bad idea?!_

Tsuna glances out the window and cringes.

Trying not to see the half-consumed bodies lying out in the open (_they seem to like the organs the most_, something murmurs, tracking, knowing, in the periphery of his eye. _See? They left the bodies mostly uneaten and just ate the insides before going after more people_), the…_infected_ were mostly gathered around the windows of the classrooms on the first floor.

Tsuna can hear glass breaking, and more screaming. He’s never been grateful for having classes on the third floor of the school before (too many stairs for him to trip on/be pushed down), but he is now.

The door slams in its sill, jerking open slightly. Long fingers, bony, fake nails still red in ashen skin, grip the sides of the gap and pull.

Saionji, with crazy yellow eyes and half her face missing, groans loudly at the sight of them.

Students scream and flee.

There’s an immediate jam at the other door. Students scramble out of the room, as their teacher latches on to one of her students that was pushed aside.

She bites into her shoulder as the girl shrieks piercingly. Tsuna freezes, unable to move toward the exit.

There’s the sound of whipping air, and Tsuna watches as Saionji’s head caves under the force of a baseball bat smashing into her temple.

She crumbles to the floor and doesn’t get back up.

There’s blood spurting from between the bitten girl’s neck and shoulder. She’s leaning against the classroom wall, obviously bad off but still alive.

Tsuna is in too much shock to do more than crouch next to her, and try to stop the heavy bleeding with just his handkerchief. _When did Saionji-sensei become infected?_ Tsuna questions inside his head (maybe something will answer). _I thought she…died. _

Tsuna glances at his former teacher, nausea clawing at his throat. _That should have killed her!_

There’s another crack behind him.

Tsuna whirls just in time to see the rotation of Yamamoto’s bat, snapping something’s face around so hard that the neck muscles twist grotesquely. They slump to the floor.

“Another one,” Yamamoto says grimly, toeing his murdered victim on the ground. Tsuna can’t believe he just witnessed the star athlete of his school kill someone. And then shrug it off.

Then his brain catches up. _Another-_

“We can’t stay here, even if that’s what Hibari told us to do. We’re sitting ducks if we do.” Yamamoto glances at Tsuna and his other classmates who had gotten pushed out of the crush by the door. He swings his bat up on his shoulder. “We need to head out the other door and make our way to the front gate. At least then we’ll have some options.”

“What about the injured?” Tsuna blurts, still pressing his hands to the girl’s shoulder, long since soaked in blood. Yamamoto turns to look at him, and his expression unsettles before it hardens again. There’s a regretful look in his eyes.

Tsuna turns back, and sees what he sees: the girl he had been trying to help slumped against the classroom wall. Mouth open. Eyes dead.

Tsuna’s hand goes nerveless and he drags it off her shoulder. There’s red blood like oil in a layer on his palm.

She is so still, and bleeds sluggishly.

_How did I not even notice? _He wonders.

“Time to go.” Yamamoto brings the metal bat back down and tightens his grip. He runs out the other door, and the other students follow him.

Tsuna suddenly finds himself alone in the classroom, both exits open and empty.

He takes one more look at the girl, squeezes his eyes shut. Takes a breath that edges into a sob, and follows.

There’s more of them in the corridors, preoccupied with the students that had gone first.

Tsuna stumbles and lags behind Yamamoto’s group as the baseball player swings his bat, crunching through skulls on both the left and right, before apparently giving up on smashing heads to focus on speed. Tsuna is rapidly being left behind.

Tsuna can’t focus.

Everything in his head is screaming, when it’s not pushed out by the pulse of blood that cries _fear fear fear. _

He turns his head to see (_nononodon’tlook**theylikeorgans**_), as he passes by one that Yamamoto hadn’t gotten with his bat. It’s a mistake. Yellow, crazy _crazy_ eyes rise to meet his.

The offal stops rising to its mouth.

Tsuna shrieks and stumbles faster, hearing it lumber heavily after him.

“Wait!! Wait for me!!! Please please no no no no…” No one waits; he can’t see the students anymore, just the infected dotting the hall with bloody messes at their feet.

Tsuna sobs in fear, feeling the ruffle of fingers passing through his hair. He reaches the stairs. Then he feels fingers on his back, and this time they hook in his shirt.

He screams as he’s pulled back.

As he is, he loses his balance. His foot slips from under him, and he gets a terrifying glimpse of a red-stained mouth, before it’s whirled away and he falls down the stairs.

He bounces a couple times, and Tsuna reflexively curls, to keep his head away from the wall. He hits the mid-floor landing hard. Dazed, he lies there a second and moans.

Something else moans. Tsuna’s eyes fly back open when he realizes something’s lying across his legs.

Tsuna’s arms shoot out and immediately claw to drag himself away when he feels a pull. He looks back, and sees the thing turn and grab at his legs.

It’s half-eaten face, one eye and cheek bitten off, lowers, its jaw stretching wide.

His heart feels like it’s bursting in his chest, and Tsuna screams. He wriggles madly, arms dragging him forward, and he can feel its wet hands slip, his foot connecting and shoving. It loses its grip on him. Somehow he pulls himself up and races down the stairs. It staggers back to its feet out of the corner of his eye.

Tsuna hits the second floor, sees its hallways covered with the things, and pivots on the handrail to continue down the stairs. There’s another one of them on the flight coming up, groaning and reaching for him.

Tsuna spins and tries to go back up, but sees the one from before stagger onto the second floor.

He turns back to the one below, gasping at how it’s inches from him. He grasps the handrail with both hands and kicks wildly at it. It’s strong and pushes against his legs, reaching up for him. Tsuna gets pushed up on the rail, and, with a sudden clear idea, throws himself over the railing completely.

Tsuna lands on his back, head bouncing off the tile. He sees stars. And blacks out.

Tsuna blinks, eyelids feeling slow and heavy. When he moves his eyes, things make tracks in his vision, like those purple shadows that follow if you stare at a bright light. His ears pop.

A shadow moves over him. Tsuna squints painfully. When it bends over him it finally comes into focus.

A girl with yellow, red-ringed pupils opens her mouth and exhales reeking breath over him.

She grabs him by the shoulders. Tsuna belatedly opens his mouth to scream, as she goes for his throat.

Another blur and a loud crack.

The girl is thrown backwards off him. Tsuna scrambles up on his elbows to watch as there’s another crack and then a squelch as the girl’s head caves in. Yamamoto is standing over her, his metal bat coated in gore, watching the corpse carefully. When he sees Tsuna staring at him, he gives him a grim little smile.

“Don’t worry. They stay down if you hit them in the head, I think.”

Tsuna makes a weird little noise, but doesn’t move. His head is spinning.

Yamamoto moves beside him, crouching down to grab his arm. Tsuna is unresistingly pulled up.

“Thank you, Yamamoto-kun,” Tsuna says, staring at the dead girl. He sees Yamamoto smile out of the corner of his eye.

“You’re welcome, Dame-Tsuna.”

There’s a huge bang, and Tsuna is suddenly aware of the cacophony coming from outside. Both him and Yamamoto turn to look at the front doors.

One of the double doors is cracked open. There’s an arm sticking through the doorway. They both walk quietly towards the entrance, an unpleasant ringing starting up in his ears as Tsuna gets closer to the noise and sunlight.

Yamamoto grabs his sleeve before they go.

“Hey. It’s- it’s crazy out there. I pretty much lost everyone immediately and came back in here to escape. But I think they’re coming in from all sides now. And I need to get back to my dad. Will you be alright? Can you run?”

Yamamoto is planning on ditching him. Tsuna is terrified. He hears noise coming from the stairwell, and remembers the things upstairs. The first floor is mostly deserted, because it sounds like everything moved outside. He…he doesn’t think it’ll stay that way. Tsuna doesn’t want to get trapped in here with those things.

He wants to go home.

“I can run,” Tsuna says, not knowing if he can, but wanting to stay with Yamamoto a little longer. Yamamoto nods. “Good. As soon as we’re out there, we run like hell. Okay?”

Doesn’t sound like a plan, but Tsuna’s not coming up with anything better through his splitting headache. “O-Okay…”

Yamamoto sidles up to the open door. Casting one last glance back at Tsuna, he shoves it open.

Tsuna watches the arm in the doorway as the heavy door swings reluctantly in. It’s attached to another girl. This one doesn’t look infected. But the scissor handles cocked awkwardly out of an eye means she’s very very dead.

Tsuna steps over her, lifting his head, and the scorch of sunlight in his eyes dwindles until he sees a tableau he’ll never forget.

The school grounds are mad with people. There’s a lot of running and chasing and blood and and and

and eating. Right in front of him, Tsuna watches a student, a guy, stagger awfully, choking on blood jetting out of a wound on his neck that his palm won’t cover. Someone reaches behind him to grip him. A dark head follows to bite down into the shoulder on the other side.

His face twists with unimaginable pain, but instead of screaming, blood spurts out of his mouth.

A hand grabs Tsuna’s shoulder and shoves him to the side.

“The gate! The gate!” Yamamoto shouts into his ear, barely heard over the chaos. Tsuna’s eyes skitter past the guy and look towards the school gate. Bodies cover the ground around it but it looks mostly clear, only a few struggling people scrapping between the walls.

“Follow me!” Yamamoto yells, tugging, and then takes off.

Tsuna staggers after him and then finally pulls off a run. Every pound of his foot sends shooting pain through his brain. He keeps his eyes on Yamamoto’s back and drives forward, dodging teachers, students, lumps on the ground. Yamamoto is whacking off anything that turns in their direction, clearing the way for him.

He’s only taking care of the front though. And Tsuna never was any good at taking care of himself.

Somehow his feet tangle together and Tsuna tumbles to the side.

He knocks into someone that he had meant to go around and lands with a pained grunt in the dirt. He quickly scrambles to hands and knees, and takes a look at the person he landed on, dread squeezing his heart. The person turns, and it’s a guy, not a thing. But the guy’s covered in blood, spattered in it, and the look on his face-

It’s like he’s not there. Like the person inside took a vacation, and a demon stole his body. A huge, blood-speckled grin stretches his face. There’s a bloody lump in front of him.

(_staccatobreathing salivadripping musclecontractingaroundeyesdifficultyfocusing_)

There’s a boxcutter in the hand that he raises.

“You,” is the only thing he says.

When he stabs it into Tsuna’s shoulder, Tsuna cries out more from shock than pain: the blade is small. When he uses it to slash the knife out of his skin that’s when it comes: the agonizing pain.

Tsuna clutches his shoulder and rolls away and to his feet.

The guy lumbers up. He’s an upperclassman, and much bigger than scrawny Tsuna. The guy squints: it looks like he has a tic. His eyes twitch all around, like he’s distracted by the surrounding chaos.

For a moment, Tsuna hopes that he’s forgotten about him. Since Tsuna’s never that lucky, the guy seems to see him again.

“Hey!” He bursts out, like he’s going to say more but never does. He slashes the air in front of him, then starts toward Tsuna.

Backing up, Tsuna looks frantically to either side, trying to find Yamamoto. He doesn’t see him anywhere.

There’s a hand in his shirt. He thought he was further away.

Tsuna’s lifted to his toes. Eye to eye, Tsuna stares into the eyes of the guy who’s going to kill him for bumping into him.

The muscles contract around his eyes. The arm holding the boxcutter lifts high over Tsuna’s head.

A bright metal bar slams into the arm, twisting it back sharply.

The guy screams in shock as there’s a popping noise. The boxcutter drops, and the upperclassman scuttles back, holding his arm and crying. The good arm is grabbed, extended, and then twisted until it pops too. Screaming, the guy tries to head-butt his assailant. He receives a sharp blow to the temple for the effort and reels away, finally stunned.

_“Hibari?”_ Tsuna might’ve whispered. He almost can’t believe it.

Hibari is standing in front of him, his much-feared tonfa parallel on his arms, missing his coat. Tsuna’s never seen him without his coat. He thought that thing was literally stapled to his undershirt, how else could he wear it off his shoulders all the time and it never fall off.

“Leave school grounds immediately.”

Tsuna looks around to see who he’s talking to before, duh, he realizes it’s him. Like he wants to stick around? His head is killing him, and he doesn’t know what throbs more, that or his shoulder.

Hibari doesn’t turn to check for a response, and instead whirls to subdue someone else. Tsuna was almost across the yard when he tripped. The school gates stand nearby, completely empty.

No Yamamoto.

Tsuna crosses as quickly as he can. He hesitates when he gets there and looks back for Hibari.

Hibari is covered in people, hands grabbing him from every direction. His terrifying narrow eyes are wide now, as a woman with half her hair ripped out bites into his arm.

His other tonfa smashes into her head. Distracted with her, the other people surround him.

Tsuna turns and runs in fear, guilt crushing him at the same time, as he leaves the other boy behind.

~

He can’t stand it.

Running for minutes, Tsuna is somehow lost in his own neighborhood.

He can’t stand it.

He can’t go back. He can’t.

He’d be worse than useless. He’d be dead.

Honestly, he has wondered before which was worse. Useless, or dead?

He’s so dizzy.

The neighborhood looks a bit different, which was why it had thrown him. There had been bodies down some of the streets that he took going to school. Terrified, Tsuna avoided them. Which was how he ended up in a part that he was unfamiliar with. He doesn’t even know his own neighborhood. Is he really this useless?

His shoulders flinch, and he pushes it down, far down, but not far enough.

Hibari’s eyes had been so surprised _shut up!_

Useless.

He has to get home.

He has to find his mother.

He couldn’t do anything, because he’s useless, just like he always is.

The tears are hot on his face. He scrubs them away, because he has to get home and find mom and he needs to see to do that.

Looking around, staring hard and ignoring his headache, Tsuna is finally able to find some vague memory of the place. He used to know someone who lived here…

He just remembers who when he sees them: Mochida Kensuke.

Tsuna sees double. _Mochida-kun._

When his vision clears, Tsuna can process what he’s seeing. Mochida is standing outside of what Tsuna now recognizes as his house. He’s hunched over in the entrance-way, wincing and wrapping something around his arm.

Tsuna is not sure whether to approach or not. The decision is taken from him when Mochida looks up and starts at seeing him.

“Dame-Tsuna?!” Mochida shouts in disbelief, then flinches and looks around quickly. They both stand there for a moment, listening, before Mochida pushes off from the wall he’s leaning against and treads over to Tsuna.

“What are you doing here, Dame-Tsuna? And how the hell did you escape from school?” Tsuna stutters and avoids his eyes, not wanting even now to admit to Mochida that he got lost in his own neighborhood.

“That was insane. You’re on the third floor, right?” Tsuna hesitantly agrees, and Mochida nods as if confirming something in his head.

“My classroom was on the second. I didn’t think we’d make it out, all these infected people ran into the hallways right after Hibari’s announcement. Goddamn stupid. Me and a couple other guys, we ended up having to climb down from the windows after things inside went south.”

Mochida looks him up and down. “You don’t look so bad. How did you get out? That must’ve been some kind of miracle.”

Tsuna opens his mouth, and finds that he has no idea how to explain it. No idea if he’s even remembering correctly or not.

“Y-Yamamoto-kun helped me…” He eventually mutters.

“Yamamoto, huh? Well, that explains it. I saw that guy when I was climbing down. He knows how to use that bat for sure, a little too well if you ask me. He was taking no prisoners, which was weird, because Hibari on the other hand-”

Maybe it was the name. Maybe it was all just catching up and overwhelming him.

Nausea makes his gorge rise, and Tsuna finds himself sputtering drool out of his mouth as his stomach swirls, bending over. The only reason he doesn’t fall to his knees between that and the dizziness is Mochida. Tsuna is vaguely surprised to note that Mochida is holding him up.

“Shit. Shit, the back of your shirt is _soaked_\- Goddammit, there’s blood in your hair too, you must’ve hit your head or something. I thought you said Yamamoto had taken care of you? What, with his bat to your head? _Shit-_” He hisses out the last word.

Through his bangs, and with strings of drool dripping from his mouth, Tsuna rolls his eyes to look. The gauze, what Mochida had been wrapping with earlier, had come loose from his arm. There’s a bite mark on his forearm, swollen red, taking up the entirety of one side. It’s obviously human.

Tsuna looks up at Mochida, confused.

“Got it at the school,” Mochida hastily explains, wrapping the gauze around to cover it again. “That courtyard was crazy, nutsos everywhere. Hey, I’ve got another first aid kit in my kitchen, you want to- uh- wait outside while I get it? You’re going back to your house right, for your mom? I’ll walk you there, someone’s got to make sure you don’t get your pathetic ass eaten.”

Mochida hurries off inside.

Tsuna stares after him, even more confused. Mochida’s…lying? No, not lying per se, but something was off. Maybe he’s really planning on offering Tsuna up as fresh meat. Ugh, less thinking about meat. This is not helping his nausea.

He doesn’t think Salisbury steak can be his favorite anymore.

God, he needs to focus. He shakes his head to clear it, and then nearly gets knocked out by the stabbing pain between his eyes. Thanks to the nausea he forgot about his head injury. He is so stupid.

“Hey, Dame-Tsuna, get out of the middle of the road! If someone infected comes up to make a snack out of you, I’m not coming out to rescue you!” _That totally contradicts what you just said!_ Tsuna tries to tell him, but the words come out as a slurring and spitting mess, and halfway through _contradicts_ Tsuna gives up and trudges over to Mochida.

Mochida eyes him with characteristic irritation and a hint of apprehension. Or concern? This would be mind-boggling on any other day. Mochida hasn’t cared enough to lend a pencil since the second grade, but now he’s bringing him a first aid kit. Huh.

Ugh.

Mochida tells him to wait on the stoop outside, drops a backpack next to him, and heads in. Tsuna sits there and cradles his poor head.

He can’t believe today. He can’t believe it. This could have all been some outstandingly horrific, out-of-the-blue hallucination if it weren’t for the terrible pain in his head and shoulder. Even with that, he’s expecting someone to come up to him and tell him that this was all a hoax and they would be back in school tomorrow. That everyone just spontaneously decided to play a trick on Dame-Tsuna, that no one died and everyone was fine.

It astounds him that even though he doesn’t really believe that, some part of him is still expecting it. Waiting for that person to come and tell him that none of this was real.

Water trickles under his hands and Tsuna rubs it away as he looks back up to stare out the gate.

Mochida’s street stays quiet. His neighbors are working families and would have all been gone at this time of day. There’s a discolored patch on the right-hand gate, and Tsuna finds himself staring at it, remembering.

They had been playing pirates one day, when they were little, and Mochida had said that pirates marked the places that they had been. For some reason, they decided as pirates they should do this with spray paint. There’s nothing much left of their artwork, just a shadow on the concrete, but Tsuna remembers how long they sat there and painstakingly sprayed their symbols, Tsuna’s robot-pirate and Mochida’s ninja-pirate. They had probably been pretty bad since neither of them had an inch of artistic talent, but they were so proud when they finished and saw how dark the marks were on the gray concrete.

Until Mochida’s mom came home and had shrieked at the top of her lungs. She had banished Mochida to his room, called Tsuna’s mom, and screeched at the both of them as Tsuna sat and scrubbed and scrubbed for hours. He had to come back every day for a week to finish taking their marks back off. He was never allowed inside again. He had to stay out there and scrub with Mochida-san yelling all sorts of stuff at him, while Mochida-kun never left the house, just watched Tsuna clean from the window.

He was never allowed back here after that. He had overheard Mochida’s mom tell his mother that he was a bad influence.

The door quickly opens and closes behind him, and Tsuna jumps a little, snapping out of memory lane as Mochida settles beside him.

“Okay, the stuff on your head looks dry, so probably we should look at that wound on your back first.”

Getting his shirt off was a two-man job. Tsuna was crying again by the time they got it off, as the fabric had settled in the hole in his shoulder and they had to rip it out. Mochida plugged it with gauze until the bleeding slowed.

Tsuna looked back when he took it off again, and then turned back around immediately. Mochida was wide-eyed and overwhelmed and that in turn was freaking Tsuna out. He headed in to wet a towel, and finally put on some butterfly bandages and taped on a pad after wiping it off as best he could.

“Okay. You need a hospital for that, but –that should be good for now.” (_falseconfidence_) “Okay, now your head.”

When Mochida heads back in to wash the hand towel he’s using, Tsuna hears a thump. Running water is in the kitchen, but the thump came from the hall closet.

There it goes again.

Louder and repeating.

The water’s still running in the kitchen, so probably Mochida can’t hear it. Tsuna holds his breath and wobbles to his feet. He peers into the front hallway. Why aren’t they patching him up inside anyway? He listens.

Another thump and this time Tsuna can see the closet door shake.

He steps inside, sliding off his school uwabaki automatically. Stubs his toe on the step up, but manages to keep his reaction to a hiss. It’s quiet as he tiptoes carefully down the hallway.

The doors have stopped rattling, but Tsuna thinks he can hear something, something soft. A rustle. He steps warily closer, turning an ear toward it, listening.

A harsh gargling sound comes, loud after the silence, and a small shriek escapes Tsuna as he stumbles back. The door bangs, slamming against the lock, shaking violently now, and the hissing moaning grows loud, hungry.

Tsuna is plastered against the opposite wall, terrified, looking at the previously innocent door.

A hand grabs his shoulder and shoves him down the hall.

Tsuna wobbles out the front door, trips onto the sidewalk, and stumbles past the gate. He hesitates to go any further into the unsafe street and whirls around to see. Mochida is standing in the doorway, on the stoop, and there’s a weird look on his face. His head is turned to the side a little, like he’s listening to the rattling door in the hall. He grabs the handle and shuts the front door.

There’s an awkward silence after that, as Mochida stands there with his hand on the knob. Tsuna doesn’t know what’s going on or what to say. Finally, Mochida turns to look at him and he throws the wet towel into his face.

“Clean up your own head. That- That’s my mom, okay?!” There are tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. “I didn’t- I don’t know what happened, but I came back and she was like this so just –just -leave it, okay!? She’s going to get better –after this, after this –when help comes and they’ve got something for them, they’ll be able to give her something and she’ll get better! So just leave her alone, she can’t do anything in there, and it’ll be fine!!!”

“SHE’LL BE FINE!!!” Mochida screams at him. Tsuna wonders if his face is saying something that he’s not aware of, because mostly he just feels frightened.

Mochida scrubs his face with an arm, cutting off a sob, and then roughly grabs up the backpack that has been sitting on the ground.

“Let’s go already, this is a waste of time. I can’t do much about your stuff anyway, and shouldn’t you be looking to your own mom first?” Mochida says, contradicting everything he said before.

Tsuna doesn’t mention it. Mochida pushes past him onto the street in a fake- fragile- offended temper.

The towel is warm and tinged a little with the blood in his hair. He stares at Mochida’s house, feeling a helpless sense of foreboding.

He doesn’t mention that either.

~

They don’t really meet up with anyone before they get to Tsuna’s home. There’s a couple of people Tsuna and Mochida spot from the street, moving in and out of houses purposefully. Tsuna thinks they’re the homeowners, until their stares get returned and the strangers’ body language becomes subtly aggressive. Then Tsuna realizes what they’re doing. He doesn’t see anything they’re carrying, but there are cars in the street, so they can cart off anything heavy that they loot from the houses.

Tsuna wants to say something.

_How could they?_ So many people have died today and it’s just barely mid-afternoon. _Don’t they care that so many kids died? _Those could be his dead classmates’ houses. Their families could come back and discover that not only had their children died, but all their valuables were missing as well. The disregard, more than the theft, feels monstrous.

But they’re looking back, hard, and Tsuna shrinks and closely follows Mochida’s shadow. Mochida doesn’t say anything but picks up the pace. There’s no other adults that they can see, no one who has a chance of making them stop. And anyway it would be stupid to yell and call attention to themselves. So they move on, quickly, and the strangers look back to the houses.

Tsuna swallows back any inclination to say anything. He’s been practicing that a lot today.

He just hopes that no one’s been in his house, scaring his mom, or comes by later to check it out. It’s not the worst thing that could happen right now, not by far, not after the blood-soaked afternoon, but thinking about it happening makes Tsuna grit his teeth in anxiety and walk a little bit faster.

His house and street look mostly untouched.

There’s no bloodstains or bodies visible on the road anyway. Some papers flutter by in front of the house on the normally well-swept street, some kind of advertisement that Tsuna can’t make out. The gate is still locked when Tsuna opens it to let Mochida and himself in.

Tsuna opens his front door and calls, “I’m home! Mom?” And suddenly it feels unbearably urgent.

“Mom???” he shouts from the entryway, neglecting the open door behind him.

He checks the living room, the kitchen. Races back into the hall and barely notices Mochida closing the front door as he bounds upstairs. Throws open the doors to rooms that are the same as they were this peaceful morning. Throws open closets too when everything else proves empty.

No sign of a disturbance. No sign of his mom.

Tsuna slowly closes the door to his parents’ room and trudges back downstairs, mind whirling. Where else would his mom go at a time like this? Was she even aware of what was happening? His mom normally turned on the TV when she was doing house chores, but if she had gone shopping she might have left right after he had. Had the TV been on this morning?

No matter how hard he pushes, Tsuna’s mind remains a blank. There’s nothing to remember if he hadn’t bothered to notice in the first place. Halfway down the stairs, he stops and sinks down on the steps, elbows on his knees and hands in his hair.

Why does he never notice anything important?

His eyes sting and his breath comes unsteady.

“…She’ll be back soon, you know.” Tsuna doesn’t look up. He doesn’t want to see if Mochida believes that or not. He draws his knees up tighter and pulls at his hair.

“…Come on.” There’s a hand on his shoulder and he has to pull up. Mochida’s face is grave, and not exactly comforting, but maybe sympathetic. “I’ll stay until she gets back, a’right? …Not like I have anywhere else to be.”

~

Outside the window, the light changes.

Orange slats of light bend down the wall. Tsuna tries to keep an eye on the outside, but finds himself watching the wall in a daze. When he discovers himself doing this, his heart grips in panic and guilt, and he turns back to the window, eyes darting across the front lawn. Once in a while, he goes out to look over the wall. Nothing moves on the streets. It’s eerily quiet. When he goes back inside he catches himself staring at the wall again.

He’s only been to school and back today. But somehow, it feels like he has walked a great distance for a very long time.

He also feels like he could go on walking forever: walk, walk, walk out of this town, out of this horror story.

But not without his mom.

Mochida is on the couch. He’s sweating a lot and his breathing is heavy. He clutches his arm – the injured one – as if it’s causing him great pain. They cleaned the bite, rubbed disinfectant on, and bandaged it properly with Nana’s huge supply of first aid items she keeps under the sink. But it doesn’t seem to do much. Tsuna thinks that it’s probably infected and affecting him, though admittedly he doesn’t know much about infections.

With that in mind, he thinks he needs to try and find help again.

He tries the phone. There’s a connection, but none of the emergency numbers he punches in – the ones taped on the bottom of the phone cradle by his mom – pick up. Same thing as when they tried earlier.

Not knowing what else to do, he goes to his parent’s room, and takes out his dad’s laptop from the false siding in the right hand side of the closet. He plugs the ethernet cable with it into the socket behind the bed and powers it up.

When he gets to the login page, he’s stumped, same as always. Whenever he tries a password (like, cringing, “tsunafish”), he gets this really annoying pop up: “NICE TRY KIDDO, BUT YOU SHOULD ONLY LOOK AT CERTAIN SITES WHEN YOU’RE OLDER” with this stupid animation of a badly drawn blonde head winking at him. He wants to throw the laptop at the wall.

For a guy in construction, his dad has always been weirdly paranoid, he thinks, tucking the laptop back behind the siding. He knows about this hiding place because he was a sneaky kid once, playing hide and seek under his parent’s bed without their knowledge. But there’s been a few times where he’s discovered his dad had little hidey holes in the house that he would have never thought to look for.

Like tripping in the bathroom once and discovering a false tile. Pulling it out, he found some bottles of vodka. Or that time he ran into one of the paintings in the hall, and found keys hanging on the wall behind it. He was excited by this, until he found the keys opened some drawers in his dad’s desk that were full of sake. Or popping some paint cans open just to discover they had been emptied and filled with whiskey.

It’s not like Tsuna wasn’t already aware that his dad had a problem, but really. He doesn’t even pretend he’s not always wasted when he’s home, why bother hiding the alcohol?! And in such elaborate places!?

_One of his weird hobbies_, Tsuna grumbles to himself.

His wasted time looking for help or information takes the rest of the afternoon.

The sun is setting. Mochida looks worse. His skin has turned ashen and there’s a bad glaze to his eyes. Tsuna wavers in the living room doorway, wringing his wrists.

He doesn’t know what to do.

_The woman crouches over, half her scalp peeling off, her white teeth biting into his arm_

Tsuna flinches, feeling sick.

He has to do something. This time, he has to.

Even if he fails. Which he probably will.

He finally steps into the living room, looks to the floor, chewing his lip to think. _Hospital or…maybe one of the other houses?_ Tsuna has been to one of Namimori’s hospitals before, but he can’t remember which one and he doesn’t know the way. Going to one would be ideal, but unless he finds a local map or someone who knows where to go, that option is out for now. He also doesn’t have any way to transport Mochida if he can’t move.

But there’s lots of homes nearby. With plenty more electronics – computers, cell phones. The electricity is still on, so the internet is probably his best option of getting more information about Mochida’s condition. Tsuna doesn’t have a cell phone himself, his mother couldn’t be sure of trusting him with one, but nearly everyone else has one right?

_Yeah. A house. It’s my best bet_… Tsuna looks out the living room window, into the still, empty street, and swallows.

He would be lucky if all he found were other looters.

_I have to do something! I can’t just sit here and **do nothing AGAIN. **_Tsuna turns to Mochida, his face set, even as his limbs start trembling without his permission. _Stop that_, he orders himself.

“Mochida? I’m going to go see if there’s anything in the other houses that can help. You stay here okay? I’ll lock the door.”

For a moment, Mochida just sits there – slouches there, diagonal on the couch now, sweating with his eyes closed. Then his eyes flick open, and his brow creases as his default expression of a glare turns on Tsuna.

“What now?”

“I-I’m g-going to go look through the other houses. The o-ones close by.” He clenches his teeth around the stammer, but even stifling it, he can’t quite stop it. “I’ll be back in a few, okay?” He manages a trepidacious smile.

Mochida just looks at him, and then hauls himself up off the couch. “No you’re not,” he grunts.

“No – I-I mean, yes, I am!” Mochida sways when he stands up, clutching at the couch arm, and Tsuna grabs his other arm to steady him. He tries to quietly nudge him back down. “You stay, you need to rest-”

“Like hell.” Mochida growls, sweat gathering under his loose bangs, and straightens. “I aint stayin’ here while a loser like you goes out there to get eaten. Who the hell do you think I am, anyway?” This is said a lot more wearily than he probably meant to.

Tsuna opens his mouth, but doesn’t know what to say. He’s never been able to convince anyone of anything.

Tsuna caves.

They decide to keep it simple and go over the wall to the place next door. Avoid the street, and hopefully spot anything in the yard before they go over. Tsuna goes first.

Through the bushes, Tsuna checks the neighbor’s yard. It seems like kind of a lame idea once he realizes how much the bushes obscure his vision, but Tsuna does his best. Once he thinks it’s clear, Tsuna painfully pushes himself through. It stings and smarts; surprisingly so, he thinks, considering what he has already survived today.

His next-door neighbor doesn’t have a computer, or a useful phone in the house. Instead there’s a lot of knitting. He had forgotten that it was mostly just a deaf old lady and her working son who lived here: he probably had a laptop that he took to work. Tsuna wonders briefly where the old woman went.

The next house is more useful.

The Internet is enlightening. And more terrifying than usual.

As soon as Tsuna automatically logs in and opens a browser, horrifying pictures show on the screen. From just the pictures on the homepage, Tsuna sees more gore than he had previously ever seen before today. He opens tab after new tab of news stories as he simultaneously tries to look for information on infections. He can’t seem to get anything except articles about THE infection, and on med sites he quickly discovers that ‘infection’ is too broad a search term.

He types in ‘infection from human bite’.

The first link is from Twitter. This is weird enough that Tsuna clicks on it.

NHKニュース @nhk_news . 9h

RUMORS THAT NEW INFECTION IS SPREAD BY BITES FROM INFECTED, EXTREME CAUTION URGED TO AVOID

The most upvoted comment below this one reads:

Hurricane_Bomb @hurricanebomb59 . 9h

No shit, fucking slow-ass news bastards!!!! Everyone I’ve seen bitten BY THEM, turns INTO THEM!!!

Tsuna sits there, a cold sensation slowly spreading through his chest.

_Nooo_, he thinks weakly.

Fabric rustles. Tsuna nearly topples the computer chair when Mochida groans and gets to his feet from the armchair he had been resting in. “Find anything out?”

Tsuna quickly exits the tab. “N-n-n-no!!!”

Mochida snorts and shuffles over. “Yeah, I don’t believe you,” he deadpans, reading the news article that Tsuna had opened in the other tab. Actually, TOKYO CITY POLICE FORCE ABANDON DUTY AND DESERT CITY is pretty horrifying news too.

Mochida stares at the screen, brow creasing further. Tsuna doesn’t know where to look. His eyes dart from the screen to Mochida. He feels as tense as strung wire, and his heart is pounding out of his chest. _No…_

Mochida’s eyes flick to him. Sweat is dripping from his skin, and his face is simultaneously flushed with a heavy pallor underneath.

“The country’s going to shit. You know what that means, right?”

Tsuna slowly shakes his head.

“We’re on our own. No one’s gonna help us.”

A shriek comes from outside that puts up every hair on Tsuna’s head.

Night has fallen…and outside the upstair’s window there’s movement in the dark.

_Is that a glow?_ Tsuna wonders, stepping up to the glass. The reflection from the overhead light makes it difficult to tell.

Something moves.

The window smashes, glass and wood exploding everywhere. Tsuna is thrown back, his arms up and eyes squeezed shut against the fragments. Mochida shouts.

Something hits him in the chest and he loses all of his breath. The pressure twists on his torso, Tsuna turning on his side with it. Tsuna coughs and keeps turning, rolling away from the pressure. There’s a splintering sound behind his back. An ear-splitting shriek splits his head.

Tsuna rolls into the desk and uses the edge to haul himself to his feet. There’s a flurry. Mochida shouts, “STAIRS!”

Tsuna makes it out the door, Mochida pushing him from behind, and they basically fall down the stairs, the second time today for Tsuna.

Cracking sounds echo behind them. When they hit the ground floor, Tsuna finally looks back to see what is attacking them.

Half hanging over the broken banister railing, there’s a glowing thing. It’s man-shaped, clothed in a business suit and blood-stained. But an impossible fire –a literal _sparkling_, _yellow_ flame – engulfs its head and pours out where its eyes were.

It’s mouth purses, chewing, and swallows. Then it makes a cry totally unlike the ones the other infected had made at the school, the fire on its head flashing at the sound. It makes an inhumanely high leap over the creaking banister and crashes into the floor below, both of its legs snapping with a sickening crunch at its landing. But it’s still upright, and starts moving crookedly towards them.

Mochida pulls Tsuna around by his shirt as they rush back toward the front door that’s behind them.

They stagger to a halt.

In the partial doorway is the deaf old lady from next door. Her blouse and mouth is stained all down the front a black-red. On her head and behind her cracked glasses a red flame burns. The door is partly gone in strange, wormy lines, because wherever her clawed hands touch the wood, it dissolves like sand.

She shrieks at the sight of them, and her voice moves the air in front of it like a heat-wave. It is incredibly painful to hear. Tsuna clutches his ears in reaction, feeling wet blood under his palms.

The reverberation makes his heart thunder in his chest. Tsuna feels like a rabbit in the headlights of a car, in the line of sight of their literally fiery glares.

He knows in that moment he’s gonna die.

The door dissolves completely when she throws herself against it. She moves fast through the ashes. Mochida yanks him into the dark living room and slams the glass door outside open so hard it cracks and bounces back.

Tsuna is tossed outside and falls over the edge of the veranda, getting a mouthful of dirt and almost skewered by a planting stake. He hears the glass door slam back closed. He looks up in time to see the glass shatter in another explosion of force. Mochida, who is still in front of the door, is briefly surrounded by a rainfall of sparkling, moonlit daggers.

Mochida is hurled out, flying over the grass, and plowing into the ground by the thing that exploded through the door.

Tsuna sees the yellow-flamed head rising over Mochida’s body, terror pealing through him. He scrambles to his knees, eyes locked on the two bodies, before a shuffling sound startles him. Still on his knees, he looks up…

The deaf old lady looks down on him with silver-stained, crooked glasses. The fire that comes out of her eyes still licks out from behind them, and briefly gives the bizarre likeness of florescent fur lining the spectacles. The long, thick black lines that run around and down from her lips seem to glisten in the moonlight. The teeth she bares look unnaturally bright.

Her arms are out, reaching and grasping. As she steps towards Tsuna, she runs into a wind-chime set out on the veranda. The many small pieces tinkle, and the long pipes clang loud and discordant. The look on her face seems almost confused.

Tsuna lashes out with a foot, not even thinking about it, and the old lady tips. She goes down in the garden by Tsuna, her head coming down hard on one of the planting stakes. There’s a squishing sound, and the stake snaps, with her landing half on her back, half still on the veranda.

Tsuna looks down as she lays right next to him in the dirt, and sees the red fire flicker out from her head and eyes, the right eye going out first with the broken off stake sticking out of it. Her body goes limp.

There’s a pair of garden shears lying off to the side in a small toolbox. Tsuna picks them up.

_The head_, Tsuna remembers someone saying, a very long time ago.

Across the yard, the yellow head comes up, ripping, and goes back down for more. Tsuna taps it on the shoulder.

When it looks around, Tsuna stabs it in the eye with the shears. It drops and falls limp.

Tsuna stares at the mess that is left of Mochida and knows it’s over.

There is a cry, but Tsuna only looks over dully. Walking the street beyond the garden wall, there is another thing walking. It has an orange-colored flame crowning its head, and it walks slowly, shuffling. Other things walk behind it, with other-color fires and very different gaits, but Tsuna can’t care right now and none of them glance this way. They follow a cry off down the street, and Tsuna stands there and watches them go.

~

Tsuna has sat here for…

The thought comes and cuts off, not bothering to come back. Tsuna isn’t bothering to do much right now. Thinking, least of all.

As he sits there cross-legged next to Mochida’s remains, staring without seeing, there’s a thought though that wanders restlessly and stays in Tsuna head, refusing to leave even when pleaded with.

_The last time we spoke…_ What was the meaning in it? There was no goodbye.

When Mochida shouted “Stairs!” did that count as the last time they spoke? Or was it when he threw Tsuna down the stairs, when that yellow-head had taken its first bites of him before it crashed through the railing? Was there a kind of spoken thought when he tossed him through the door and closed it behind them, guarding him from the monster with his body?

When they sat in the upstairs office before the computer and Mochida had said “We’re on our own”? Tsuna still doesn’t know what he meant by that. Was that meaningful? Was that –really –their last conversation?

What was the meaning?

It’s a problem Tsuna can’t solve. Like he is back at school, in class, staring at his test, and coming up blank every time. Essay question, answer in five sentences or more with an opening, middle, and conclusion: **What was the meaning of the last time you spoke with Mochida?**

Mental Tsuna taps at the test with his pencil and stares out the window dully, where he can see the ruined mess of Mochida’s throat and collar. His face is blood-splattered, but intact. Not the best view, Tsuna thinks. The school should change it.

There’s a flash of hands in the window, grabbing at a white shirt, slanting steel eyes widening, before Tsuna turns back to his test. **What was the meaning of Mochida dying? **As usual, Tsuna didn’t even know there was going to be a test.

Tsuna stares. The paper remains white, with neat thin black lines. Pristine. Accusing.

**What was the meaning…**

Tsuna’s eyes slide back to the window and he can see it. Movement.

Beyond the white framework of the classroom windows, Mochida stirs. His eyes flutter. Tsuna’s heart catches in his throat.

They open yellow. A deep rasp hisses out of his bloodstained mouth. Blood sputters from his throat.

And suddenly Tsuna finds himself beyond the window.

~

Before Tsuna is aware of himself again, he is on the ground, struggling.

Mochida turned over to try to bite at his ankles, and Tsuna had automatically tried to push him off. That had turned into grappling with him. Mochida had been captain of an athletic team and Tsuna had never been strong. Mochida had quickly turned them over and was snapping at his face with his teeth.

As he struggles with Mochida, his arms cross over his…friend’s chest, under his chin. Mochida’s jaw snaps, but his head is barely attached to his body, lolling unexpectedly. His fingers rake. The tips leave gouges in Tsuna face and arms.

Tsuna knows he’s about to die. It didn’t make sense that he had even lasted this long in the first place, with the strongest people he knows dead around him. He doesn’t know if he even wants to live.

There’s a test in front of him, one that he’s always failed. Why try?

This morning, when he left, he jumped down the stairs and flew through the door. His mother had been in the kitchen, perhaps preparing to go out for a bit of shopping. Why didn’t he stop, for just a moment? Why didn’t he even look at her, as he passed the doorway?

He regrets that moment so much. That can’t be the last time he spoke to his mother. She is the only person who ever cared about him.

That can’t be his goodbye to her.

He would regret it even if he was dead.

In the middle of dying, Tsuna thinks _I have to see her again._

The breath he takes is the deepest breath he’s ever drawn. Like he came out of water to be resurrected. Reborn.

Tsuna pushes up with all and more of his strength. They flip over completely. Tsuna uncrosses his arms and wraps his spindly fingers around Mochida’s half-gone throat. _The head. Mom._

Tsuna twists and pulls. He pulls harder than he ever has in his life. Mochida’s warped voice hisses and coughs under him. And then all the effort is gone.

Mochida’s head flies across the lawn. The body below Tsuna goes limp like the others.

For reasons he couldn’t say, Tsuna goes back into the house to find a flashlight to find Mochida’s head. When he does it is still moving and the eyes are open. Tsuna goes back for the shears.

When he stabs his brain through one of his eyes, he finally stops moving entirely. Tsuna does it a couple more times, to be sure, and because he becomes hysterical. He quickly tires.

Mochida’s head lies on the ground. It’s at an angle, with the flashlight on it, and the other eye stares out past him. It is yellow and still: all will and life gone.

~

Tsuna wakes up on the couch.

There’s a warm blanket over him. _Mom? _

He can’t recall the last time he was allowed to sleep out here like this. He must have fallen asleep watching TV. Which would explain the weird dream he had. Must be the weekend.

He sits up slowly. He has a headache. His shoulder also got twisted in his sleep. There’s some pills in the upstairs bathroom, he thinks? He’s more hungry though. He shuffles past the couch into the kitchen.

His mom hasn’t started on anything. It doesn’t look like she’s up. Sleeping in a little, he guesses.

He pulls out some pieces of bread and, foregoing a plate or something to drink, sits at the table and munches slowly.

It’s nice to be able to take his time. Most of the time he’s always rushing out the door.

Tsuna’s chewing slows as a wave of uneasiness falls over him. _Where’s Mom?_ He suddenly thinks.

He leaves the half-eaten bread on the table.

Out in the front hall, everything looks the same. Morning sunlight streams bright and cheery through the glass in the entryway. The front door makes Tsuna feel a rock of foreboding in his stomach, and he turns away from it.

Upstairs and into his parent’s room. The window is open and the curtain flutters. The bright light from the window illuminates every corner. His mom is not here.

When he crosses the room to check, movement from the side startles him and his keyed up nerves nearly give him a heart attack. He releases a breath and closes his eyes for a moment when he realizes it’s just the bureau mirror. Then his eyes snap open again.

The person looking from the mirror is unrecognizable from yesterday.

Yellow-tickled bruises cover his arms, scratches and scabs on his face. Clothing torn and speckled with dirt and blood. He can see it, when that strange boy realizes and the horror fills his eyes. For a moment, Tsuna has this bizarre idea of mirror worlds, worlds traveled to in looking glasses, where strange and terrible things could happen. Things that couldn’t happen in the safe and boring real world.

Right then, a feeling overwhelms him. Tsuna could swear that the real world was a dream, maybe a dream from within the mirror, and that he was no more than a thought floating in it until the dreaming person woke.

Half-caught in this idea, Tsuna turns away from the boy above the bureau and scrapes away the curtain with a bloodied hand.

Outside it is a beautiful day. The sun brightens the green trees and grass, and reflects blindingly off the concrete. In the street, wanders someone. No, not someone.

Tsuna automatically moves to the side behind the curtain as he can see the blood-splattered body turn in his direction. It stops in the street.

Tsuna doesn’t breathe. By the angle of its head, it is staring at the window (he can’t see the face, thankfully.) It shuffles a step and pauses again. Shuffles, stops.

Tsuna realizes suddenly that it’s moving towards his house every time the curtain flaps.

Tsuna grabs a corner and tries to keep it as still as possible. It’s still moving, but only slightly.

The body out there stares for what feels like a long time. Then it slowly hobbles off in another direction, apparently losing interest. Tsuna lets out a breath and closes the window.

His eyes remain averted from the mirror when he leaves the room. He doesn’t need another reminder that he’s trapped in a nightmare.

He locks up the house, having failed to do that when he came back last night. Cleans up in the bathroom. He wonders as he washes if there might not be something wrong with the water, and how much longer he might have it for.

When he’s done, he sits at his desk in his room, looking out safely from behind the glass and the still curtain.

He’s waiting for his mom. There’s nothing else to do.

He thinks about his dead schoolmates for a moment, before the thought cuts off, and how it’s his fault they’re dead, and wonders if any of the others survived. Will he see them again?

For their sake, he hopes not.

**Author's Note:**

> For the other Katekyou Hitman Reborn/zombies stories that did not think to employ dying will zombies: FOR SHAME. I still love that idea after all this time of this story sitting on the shelf.
> 
> This was originally part of a much longer story that I lost inspo for and will not be picking back up again. HOWEVER, for those of you interested in some of the snip-its I thought up:
> 
> 1\. Tsuna does have his version of Hyper Intuition in the story (did you catch that while reading?) and it comes in real handy when he starts coming into his own as a leader and has to negotiate with his human enemies (he always knows when someone's lying or hiding something).  
2\. The zombies in RWG are inspired by both The Walking Dead and the videogame Dying Light. In Dying Light, the zombies become much faster and gain special abilities at night, and I thought how cool it would be if death wasn't exactly the end of Dying Will flames. Zombies in this world during the day are much like TWD, but at night they gain all these powers from whatever Flame was most dominant in them during life.  
3\. All of the other guardians do show up at some point (lol, Gokudera of course was hinted at), but they're not always part of the same group. I had this idea at one point that eventually in Namimori there would be three factions: Tsuna's, the Disciplinary Committee's, and Mukuro's faction which would be more out by Kokuyo Land.  
4\. Xanxus on ice would show up eventually as well, as well as this one dude who keeps wrapping the walking dead in bandages, putting them in thick winter coats and top hats, and having them led around by chains…  
5\. As a little bit of an upper, I can leave you with the knowledge that Hibari didn't actually die, like Tsuna was sure he did. Hibari just loses his arm in a suitably bad-ass situation off-camera ala Merle, and then he comes back twice as terrifying. Namimori becomes relatively clean zombie-wise later on, because even with one arm Hibari is still a beast.


End file.
